The Acceptance World

The Acceptance World is the third book of Anthony Powell's twelve novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. Nick Jenkins continues the narration of his life and encounters with friends and acquaintances in London, between 1931 and 1933. In an analysis of Powell's absorbing interest in literary and visual art Kerry McSweeney highlights his use of a reference to Joseph Conrad in a virtuoso description of a private hotel in Bayswater.

In his overview of Powell's novels, Understanding Anthony Powell, Nicholas Birns concludes, “The world in which Jenkins ‘seemed to find himself’ at the end of The Acceptance World is poised in an almost exact balance between satisfaction and sorrow.”

The novel is dedicated to British portrait and landscape painter Adrian Daintrey.